# Ryan Brooks > Thoughts, stories and ideas. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### About Ryan URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/about-me/ Last updated: 2016-01-18T07:18:48.000Z ![](https://www.ryanbrooks.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/qK9ed2NN_400x400.jpg) ### Ryan Brooks [**LinkedIn**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kc0wir?ref=ryanbrooks.net) I work as a security administrator for Charter Communications' Information Security team. I graduated from the University of Missouri - Saint Louis in Spring 2017 with a B.S. in Economics, a minor in Information Systems, and a certificate from the Pierre Laclede Honors College. My interests are wide-ranging, from information security & system administration, to history (with a particular interest in both general science and the development of nuclear energy and weapons), to the maker movement, to Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games... the list goes on. ### Home URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/home/ Last updated: 2016-01-24T09:33:49.000Z ## Hi. I'm Ryan Brooks. I'm an economics student at the University of Missouri — Saint Louis. You can read all about me here. ### Ryan's Outdoor Movie Nights URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/ryans-outdoor-movie-nights/ Last updated: 2023-05-07T02:04:15.000Z Come join my outdoor movie nights! Since projected movies are only visible after dark, **all movies start at or about 8pm**. The exact time will vary somewhat depending on ambient light levels, but shortly after 8pm is the target. You're welcome to show up starting at 6:30pm. I'll supply popcorn, and maybe some fresh-churned ice cream; feel free to bring snacks for yourself or to share! **Bring a lawn chair if you have one!** I have one or two spare seats, but not enough for everyone. **To avoid disturbing the neighbors, these movies are being shown as Silent Cinema**. Movie audio is broadcast via FM radio, instead of being played through speakers. I have headsets available for use, or you can bring your own FM radio with your own headphones if you prefer. *Please note that radios which rely on an internet connection will not work with this system*. **Please RSVP to each movie** by [reaching out to Ryan on Discord](https://discord.gg/R5sDXyEqUQ?ref=ryanbrooks.net) **no later than the Wednesday before the movie**. Movies are subject to cancellation due to weather. ## Upcoming Films ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/clue.jpg) June 30th - ***Clue*** (1985) Six guests are anonymously invited to a strange mansion for dinner, but after their host is killed, they must cooperate with the staff to identify the murderer as the bodies pile up. --- ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/the-trollhunter-trolljegeren-troll-hunter-14179.jpg) July 14th - ***Troll Hunter*** (2010) A group of students investigates a series of mysterious bear killings, but learns that there are much more dangerous things going on. They start to follow a mysterious hunter, learning that he is actually a troll hunter. --- ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/jurassicpark.jpg) July 28th - ***Jurassic Park*** (1993) A pragmatic paleontologist touring an almost complete theme park on an island in Central America is tasked with protecting a couple of kids after a power failure causes the park's cloned dinosaurs to run loose. --- ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/the-goonies.jpg) August 11th - **The Goonies** (1985) A group of young misfits called The Goonies discover an ancient map and set out on an adventure to find a legendary pirate's long-lost treasure. --- ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/airplane.jpg) August 25th - **Airplane!** (1980) After the crew becomes sick with food poisoning, a neurotic ex-fighter pilot must land a commercial airplane full of passengers safely. ## Past Films ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/back-to-the-future-part-i.jpg) May 26th - ***Back to the Future*** (1985) Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown. --- ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/lifeofbrian.jpg) June 2nd - ***Monty Python's Life of Brian*** (1979) Born on the original Christmas in the stable next door to Jesus Christ, Brian of Nazareth spends his life being mistaken for a messiah. --- ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/the-final-countdown.jpg) June 16th - ***The Final Countdown*** (1980) A modern aircraft carrier is thrown back in time to 1941 near Hawaii, just hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. --- ## Posts ### Coming soon URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/coming-soon/ Last updated: 2026-07-17T22:34:27.000Z This is Ryan Brooks, a brand new site by Ryan that's just getting started. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can [subscribe](#/portal/) in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published! ### Looking at More Blackmail Spam URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/looking-at-more-blackmail-spam/ Last updated: 2021-01-12T01:58:35.000Z I recently [published a post about blackmail spam](https://www.ryanbrooks.net/blog/2020/12/09/taking-a-look-at-blackmail-spam/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) in which the spammer was (as far as I could tell) unsuccessful in their efforts to scam people. Unfortunately, another campaign dropped into my inbox over the last couple of days where the spammer has been much more successful. I'm not going to do the full breakdown that I did for the previous campaign, as they are rather similar, but I'll try to highlight some differences. First, here's the full text of the email I received: > Hello! > Have you recently noticed that I have e-mailed you from your account? > Yes, this simply means that I have total access to your device. > > For the last couple of months, I have been watching you. > Still wondering how is that possible? Well, you have been infected with malware originating from an adult website that you visited. You may not be familiar with this, but I will try explaining it to you. > > With help of the Trojan Virus, I have complete access to a PC or any other device. > This simply means I can see you at any time I wish to on your screen by simply turning on your camera and microphone, without you even noticing it. In addition, I have also got access to your contacts list and all your correspondence. > > You may be asking yourself, "But my PC has an active antivirus, how is this even possible? Why didn't I receive any notification?" Well, the answer is simple: my malware uses drivers, where I update the signatures every four hours, making it undetectable, and hence keeping your antivirus silent. > > I have a video of you wanking on the left screen, and on the right screen - the video you were watching while masturbating. > Wondering how bad could this get? With just a single click of my mouse, this video can be sent to all your social networks, and e-mail contacts. > I can also share access to all your e-mail correspondence and messengers that you use. > > All you have to do to prevent this from happening is - transfer bitcoins worth $1450 (USD) to my Bitcoin address (if you have no idea how to do this, you can open your browser and simply search: "Buy Bitcoin"). > > My bitcoin address (BTC Wallet) is: 1A2BsswHPrE2RvUusSQY4w53P1WjuUdpbN > > After receiving a confirmation of your payment, I will delete the video right away, and that's it, you will never hear from me again. > You have 2 days (48 hours) to complete this transaction. > Once you open this e-mail, I will receive a notification, and my timer will start ticking. > > Any attempt to file a complaint will not result in anything, since this e-mail cannot be traced back, same as my bitcoin id. > I have been working on this for a very long time by now; I do not give any chance for a mistake. > > If, by any chance I find out that you have shared this message with anybody else, I will broadcast your video as mentioned above. > > Some scammer, somewhere. Possibly Poland, based on the IP address. As you can see, this is fundamentally the same as the email I featured last time, though this one is far more explicit regarding what they supposedly recorded me doing. I think it's interesting that they say they will file a complaint; I'm not really sure what they mean by that, or where I would do that (except, perhaps, with the ISP who owns the IP address that this email was sent from... which I may yet do). This scammer is also asking for more money; the last scammer asked for "only" $950 in Bitcoin, whereas this scammer is asking for $1,450, which is a markup of over 50%. And, sadly, when we look at the address in a [blockchain explorer](https://explorer.bitcoin.com/btc/address/1A2BsswHPrE2RvUusSQY4w53P1WjuUdpbN?ref=ryanbrooks.net), we can see that their campaign has unfortunately been successful, and appears to have netted them over $6,750 as of 1/11/21. ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/image.png) As I write this, the scammer is moving the funds from the address in the email to another address, which may belong to a Bitcoin tumbler or another method to further anonymize the source of their funds so they can withdraw it and convert it to the currency of their choosing. ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/2026/07/image-2.png) I'm pretty certain that more transactions will drain this new address (which is [3FxzHGbsojSPVf4d1FJ6QVrn8VcFGQMVJt](https://explorer.bitcoin.com/btc/address/3FxzHGbsojSPVf4d1FJ6QVrn8VcFGQMVJt?ref=ryanbrooks.net) for anyone interested in doing their own sleuthing) in fairly short order. And unfortunately for the five (or possibly six, if the $377.81 amount was intended as an initial payment to prevent the release of information) current victims of this campaign, their money is already gone and is very likely unrecoverable. Remember, a hacker isn't going to single you out for extortion unless you're a head of state or high-powered executive somewhere. Don't fall for it. --- Have you come across a piece of spam that you think deserves some closer attention? Did you get a blackmail request like the ones I've written about? Send it to me at [ryaninvestigates@rhoving.com](mailto:ryaninvestigates@rhoving.com), one of my spam honeypots, and I'll take a look at it. ### Taking a look at blackmail spam URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/taking-a-look-at-blackmail-spam/ Last updated: 2020-12-09T06:44:47.000Z ## Introduction Like many people, I receive quite a lot of spam email. Unlike most, I actually read it, because it's often interesting. I've had a number of email addresses, and between them I think at least one of my email addresses has been included in most of the big website breaches over the last eight or ten years. The spam that these emails receive varies rather widely. Some is the generic "hot woman saw your profile on this dating site, log in now for SEXXXXX!!!1!" spam that is quite common, though for a period of about a month almost all of the dating site spam I received was in German; I don't know why. There's also plenty of the "click here to buy cheap Viagra" spam, or its more recent and rather depressing counterpart, "click here to buy cheap N95/KN95 masks!" And there are of course lots of other types of spam that we've all been warned about for the last twenty-five years. But I think my *favorite* type of spam email that I've received lately is probably the blackmail spam. Those are the "I infected your computer to take secret video of you having a 'good time' on adult sites, so pay me lots of money in Bitcoin or I'll tell everyone" emails. Those have been far more persistent than I expected them to be when I originally received the first one; I honestly thought that they wouldn't be that lucrative, but I guess when you're sending out millions and millions of spam emails you're bound to get a few people who fall for it. And if enough people fall for it to pay for the botnet and a bit more as profit, then it makes sense that they continue to be blasted out into our spam folders. In fact, this kind of spam email has been one of the most prevalent spam messages I've been receiving lately, so I figured a quick analysis of one of these messages might be worthwhile. ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/2026/07/image.png) *A selection of blackmail emails I received on a single day (there were a lot more, all identical)* As you can see, all of these specific emails are from the same spammer; I received 58 copies of this exact email starting on November 17th and ending on November 19th, with 38 of them being sent starting at about 11pm on November 18th and ending at about 6am on November 19th. That lines up with about 8am in parts of Eastern Europe, almost like somebody woke up and kicked off a spam campaign just after breakfast. It ends about 7 hours later, again, as if somebody was done for the day and logged off. And in fact, the IP address attached to the email is registered to Kazakhstan's largest telecommunications company, which lines up with that idea. ## The Message Looking at the contents of the message itself, it's rather interesting. It's using the fairly standard email address spoofing to make it looks like it's coming from my email address, and points this out at the start of the message as "proof" that the spammer personally hacked me. > ''',,,:::...---\*\*\*---\*\*\*...:::'''---\*\*\* > Hey, today I got some bad news for you. > Check the sender of this email, it's your email, that means I sent it from your email account. > How?! Some time ago your computer was infected with my private malware, RAT (Remote Administration Tool). > My RAT gave me full access to all your files, accounts, contacts and it also was possible to spy on your desktop and on you over your webcam. > You can google about the functions of Remote Administration Tool. Interestingly, the email starts with random characters. I'm pretty sure this is an attempt to circumvent spam filters, but if so it didn't work. Every email I received has a slightly different combination of random characters; I'm guessing this is so hashes of the emails are all different, which could confuse some filters by making them think these are all unique emails and therefore not spam. Next, it opens with a fairly standard opening that you'll find variations of on almost all of these blackmail emails. The sender is completely correct in that I would be having a very bad day if everything else in the email was true, but almost everything else here is false. - The email address is spoofed, but that doesn't mean that the spammer had access to my account. - I'm pretty confident that my computer hasn't been infected by a remote administration/access tool. - I don't have a webcam on my computer. I do appreciate that the spammer told me to "google about the functions" of the supposed malware that they definitely installed; that's actually a fairly clever touch, since it means that they don't need to explain it, and there are plenty of stories out there where people *were* infected by malware and had information stolen. Telling the recipient to Google for the capabilities is a good psychological trick to make them panic and be more likely to fall for the scam. Next up, the spammer says this: > I COLLECTED ALL YOUR FILES, ACCOUNTS, CONTACTS. > I RECORDED SOME NICE MOMENTS OF YOU FROM YOUR WEBCAM! ;D > I can publish all your files, accounts, contacts, everywhere, including the darknet. > I can send the video of you to all your contacts, post it on social networks and everywhere else. > To stop me, pay 950$ in Bitcoin (BTC). > It's easy to buy Bitcoin (BTC), for example here: http://exbase.io , https://paxful.om/buy-bitcoin , or google another exchanger. > My Bitcoin (BTC) wallet is: *redacted for reasons I'll explain below* > Yes that's how the wallet looks like, copy and paste it, it's (CaSe-sEnSEtiVE). Here's where we get to the meat of the scam, and the actual threat. He says he has all my files, and recorded me having some "nice moments," and he'll release them all on social media if I don't pay him lots of money. This is actually rather interesting, since this spammer is much less explicit than most spammers are about what their hacked webcam footage contains. Most of the many, many blackmail messages I've received over the last year or two specify that they were recording while I was masturbating to an adult video and take great pains to assure me that if I don't cooperate they will send that footage to all of my friends. I actually kinda like the softer touch in this message, it feels nicer somehow. If the other spammers are trying to bludgeon me over the head with a baseball bat, it feels like this spammer at least wrapped it in a bit of foam first to cushion the blow slightly. I do think it's interesting that they threaten to publish my data on the darknet. For the record, there isn't really a darknet where anyone would be particularly interested in any of the things they claim to have stolen from me. Would people on the darknet be interested in my identity information? Sure, that might be worth a couple dollars. Beyond that, though, it's unlikely anyone would care-- and I would be shocked if anyone was interested in webcam footage of me having "nice moments." It's a threat that sounds scary to relatively uninformed recipients, but not to anyone more familiar with technology. The price for silence that this spammer is asking for is on the low end of what I usually see in these emails. When these started, they usually asked for a specific fraction of a Bitcoin (usually around 0.75 Bitcoin, or thereabouts), but with the price of BTC soaring recently, I've noticed that more spammers are asking for specific dollar amounts instead. Some of the other emails I've received recently were asking for about $1,450 in Bitcoin, making this spammer's offer a relative steal for the price. I redacted the wallet address, as I suspect that the wallet provided is unique to each email address-- they're identical in each email I received. I checked to see if any Bitcoin had been sent to the address, but it looks like nothing has been transferred to it. ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/image-2.png) So either the wallet is generated for each unique email address, or the spammer was unsuccessful in this specific campaign. If the wallets are indeed unique, that may be a bit of a differentiating factor in this specific campaign. I don't track every Bitcoin address I receive in these blackmail emails, but I did check a couple others that I've received and determined that they were using shared addresses for all of their recipients. Using individual addresses could be a good way to determine who could be extorted for more money; again, I'm just surmising for now since I only received one BTC address across this campaign. Lastly, this email concludes with a bit more pressure by introducing a time limit, and explains why I won't find any evidence of the malware on my computer if I look for it: > I give you 2 days time to pay. > Showing this mail to someone else wont help you, my RAT is no longer on you computer and this email was sent from some random generated account. > After receiving the Bitcoin (BTC), I will delete everything and you never hear from me again. > Next time update your browser before browsing the web! > \_\_\_\*\*\*\_\_\_...,,,'''---...\_\_\_\*\*\*...---'''---::::::::: It's now been well over two days since I received the email, so I think I can safely assume that my valuable information isn't likely to be released anytime soon. I'm really not sure why the spammer says I should update my browser before I browse the web; an adblocker extension such as [uBlock Origin](https://ublockorigin.com/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) or a network-wide adblocker such as [Pi-hole](https://pi-hole.net/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) would be far more valuable in terms of blocking threats, and most browsers auto-update these days anyway. Even as a "you should have been more careful, so this is really your fault" message, it doesn't make a lot of sense. ## Analysis and Conclusion My overall analysis of this message is that it's a solid try, but I'm guessing that it's an early effort from a fairly new spammer. The IP address it was sent from indicates it originated with a residential customer of a telecom that likely keeps records, and the message is a bit softer than most successful spammers tend to choose. Additionally, many of the emails appear to have been sent to the same email address over and over and over, instead of being sent to a broader list. I suspect this spammer was using a fairly inexpensive (or even free) email address list to send out this campaign; the email address I received these blackmail threats at has been on every major email list since 2013, and is likely fairly low-value. This could also explain the limited spread of the campaign; only one of my spam collection emails actually received it, and when I checked with others to verify if the Bitcoin address was unique per email, none of them had received a copy of it either. It could also explain why the monetary demand is low compared to similar spammers; the spammer's costs may have been low enough that almost any money received would have been a profit. Ultimately, this type of spam is just increasing. While it doesn't appear to me that this particular campaign was successful, plenty of others are. In another post, I will dive a bit more into some other blackmail spam variants, including some which use some more sophisticated methods to convince their targets that they really were hacked by the spammer. But for now, remember: these are, in the end, just scams. If you're here and reading through all of this because you received a message similar to it, it's a scam. If somebody has full remote access to your computer, they're not going to send you a polite email asking you nicely to pay up or have your information posted online, they're going to encrypt your computer and (virtually) hold it for ransom. Don't fall for it. ### We Live In The Future URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/we-live-in-the-future/ Last updated: 2018-11-29T02:10:39.000Z I grew up on science fiction. I loved reading stories of The Future, where space travel was commonplace, where all energy was generated cleanly, and where we worked side-by-side with machine intelligences to accomplish tasks. Of course, that wasn't what most of the books were about; space travel, clean energy, and A.I. were just part of the background. And many of the books I read had issues-- most of them failed to properly predict the role that women play in society (or often failed to credit them at all, aside from being a love interest for the hero), quite a few were somewhat racist, and all of them glossed over problems of everyday life that couldn't simply be resolved with technology-- but in the background areas of space travel, A.I., and clean energy, they were quite prescient. "But Ryan, none of those have happened yet," I hear you saying. And you're right, none of these have yet reached their full potential. But in a world where SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Labs, Virgin Galactic, and so many others are all working to bring affordable spaceflight to the masses (and getting pretty darn close), I think it's safe to say that space travel will soon((Assuming a generous definition of "soon")) become far more commonplace than it is today. We won't be living in *Star Trek*, but costs will come down and won't be the same barrier that they are today. And in a world where renewable energy continues to make great strides, I think it's safe for me to predict that we are well on the way to moving the bulk of our electrical generation away from fossil fuels-- there are some problems to solve with electrical transmission and energy storage, but we keep moving closer to to a solution. As more companies compete for a slice of the renewable energy pie, prices will go down, efficiency will go up, and an increasing percentage of electrical generation will be from renewable resources. Energy will increasingly be stored in batteries of one kind or another, whether they be chemical (such as Tesla's Powerpacks), mechanical (such as hydropower or compressed air), or thermal (such as molten salt paired with a concentrated solar tower). Those batteries will allow more and more of the baseload supply of energy to come from renewables, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and paving the way for those to be slowly phased out. Lastly, we already work incredibly closely with machine intelligences, though that intelligence isn't quite what was predicted (at least, not yet). Work is increasingly done on computers with incredibly complicated error checking algorithms, designed to reduce mistakes that cost money and lives. Our data is sorted and analyzed by powerful computers that can correlate information thousands of times faster than we can, letting us build more complicated and accurate models to help us learn even more about the world we live in. And most impressively (for me), we can now *literally talk to our computers and ask them to do things for us*. I know that the first two examples are far more impactful to society, but I still can't quite believe that I can just talk to my Google Home, have it correctly interpret what I'm asking for, and then give me an answer that makes sense and fulfills my need. It still feels like magic. The science fiction writers I read in my youth may have written about a world that was full of more straightforward adventure than the one we live in today. But what our world lacks in swashbuckling heroes with laser swords, it more than makes up for with the amount of sheer technical wonder that we have at our fingertips each day. Fifty years ago, for me to write and publish this article would have required a bulky typewriter, a mimeograph machine to create copies of the typed article, a bunch of paper, and a stapler to staple my article up on random light poles for people to read. Today, I wrote most of this post on my Chromebook connected to the hotspot on my phone, while waiting for my car's inspection to be finished. To publish it, I hit the big blue "publish" button at the top of the page, and trusted it would be sent out to your screen when you wanted to read it. The amount of time and effort saved by modern technology for this article alone could probably cover my grocery bill for a week. And if *that's* not evidence of us living in the future, I don't know what is. *Photo by* [*Donald Giannatti*](https://unsplash.com/photos/Wj1D-qiOseE?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) *on* [*Unsplash*](https://unsplash.com/search/photos/science-fiction?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) ### Moving to Ubiquiti Unifi URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/moving-to-ubiquiti-unifi/ Last updated: 2018-11-17T05:58:09.000Z It's no secret that I enjoy working with new technology and figuring out better ways to do things. For the last couple of years I've been dissatisfied with how my internal network was configured; I was using a basic, off-the-shelf, all-in-one consumer-grade router/wireless access point, and while it normally worked *okay*, it didn't always give me the insight or visibility into my network that I really wanted to have. "If only there was a way to take a commercial-grade wireless networking system, and set it up in my apartment," I complained to everyone would listen. "Then I could configure everything the way I want, isolate devices on specific networks, and conquer the world!" I knew I didn't need a solution as expensive in-depth as Cisco's enterprise WiFi system, but wanted to graduate beyond the basic consumer networking solutions. When I found the UniFi system in an [Ars Technica review](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/review-ubiquiti-unifi-made-me-realize-how-terrible-consumer-wi-fi-gear-is/?ref=ryanbrooks.net), I was hooked-- but I was also still in college, and my meager budget was still too small to support a more advanced networking system. It wasn't long, however, before I graduated, moved to a new apartment, and suddenly had some disposable income I could throw at my home network. I started my network with the smallest and most basic component: a [UAP-AC-Lite](https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-lite/?ref=ryanbrooks.net), the cheapest wireless access point in the UniFi line. I plugged it into my switch, installed the controller software on my computer, setup my wireless networks, and... it worked! It was easier than I expected, which was almost disappointing. I mean, here I was, with a fancy access point, and it didn't even require hours of tinkering to get it to work the way I wanted? Where's the fun in that? I left the WAP in place for a couple of weeks, and then decided I needed more. I went out and bought the [UniFi Security Gateway](https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-routing/usg/?ref=ryanbrooks.net), or USG, so I could fully replace my all-in-one with some more advanced tech. The USG required some more hand-holding to get up and running, but soon that wasn't enough, either. I bought a [Cloud Key](https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-cloud-key/?ref=ryanbrooks.net), and then a [PoE Switch](https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-switching/unifi-switch-8/?ref=ryanbrooks.net), and before I knew it I was running UniFi for basically everything on my network. "That's all very well and good," I hear you say. "It's always fun to read about somebody else spending money when they technically don't need to. But what does UniFi actually do for you? What problem does it solve?" That's a good question. UniFi gives me a couple of things I wanted to have; first, it gives me a network that I can expand as my needs shift. If I'm not getting WiFi in an area, I can just plug in a WAP, adopt it into the system, and voila! I have signal. Secondly, everything's managed in one place, the UniFi Dashboard. All my equipment, and anything I add to the system, can be managed through the dashboard in real-time-- and I can do it from anywhere, since I connected my Cloud Key to my Ubiquiti account. ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/2026/07/Screenshot-2018-11-16-at-11.32.08-PM.png) The UniFi Dashboard This means I don't need to worry about remembering passwords for each of my devices, which is a major plus for anyone, even if you use a password manager. UniFi also gives me some basic deep packet inspection, which lets me keep an eye on what's talking out to the rest of the internet from my network. It's not as detailed as I would like, it's true. I haven't found a way to select a specific device and view all traffic from it, for example, but it's mostly adequate for my current needs. If something pops up that might be a problem, it's easy enough to explore and inspect to see if anything is truly amiss. As an example, the traffic stats show that remote access terminals have transferred nearly 1.25TB of data to somewhere off-network. If you don't know what that might be, that's a problem-- a remote access terminal moving lots of data could be an indication of a compromised computer being used as part of a botnet, or could be something spying on you. ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/2026/07/Screenshot-2018-11-16-at-11.37.34-PM.png) Looking at the specific DPI card for that category shows that that entire amount of data has been through SSH, which again could be an indication that something on the network is infected and is phoning home. UniFi lets us drill deeper, however, and I can see that almost all of the traffic is from one specific machine on my network, which is configured to perform incremental syncing to the cloud via rsync. But if this had actually been a compromised machine, the dashboard could have been my first indication that something was very wrong on my network. UniFi also lets me setup and configure a guest wireless portal, so no more needing to give guests my WiFi password. They can just connect to my open network (named Ankh-Morpork in honor of Sir Terry Pratchett), accept the terms and conditions which warn them that their connection may not be private and to not carry out illegal activities using my WiFi, enter the password I have posted in my apartment, and voila! they can access the web on whatever device they may choose. If they start causing issues, adding bandwidth limits and filtering specific sites is easy, as is managing which devices are connected to the guest network. Overall, I'm quite pleased with UniFi. I have more I'd like to do (like building out vlans for my various servers), but for now the network is stable, speeds are faster than they were, and my WiFi coverage is great. I've been talking up UniFi with everyone that I know, and I'm slowly building out a network at my parent's house which will let me troubleshoot remotely while increasing their speeds and security. It costs a bit more than my previous solution, but I'm glad I made the switch. *Listing image by* [*Thomas Jensen*](https://unsplash.com/photos/ISG-rUel0Uw?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) *on* [*Unsplash*](https://unsplash.com/search/photos/unifi?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) ### It's always DNS URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/its-always-dns/ Last updated: 2018-10-19T14:28:00.000Z I host a few websites for myself and family on DigitalOcean. Up until recently, I've always just spun up a new droplet for each site, so they were all fully independent from each other; this was the easiest and most convenient way to get a new site up and running without jeopardizing uptime on other sites if I made a mistake in configuration, and it was drop-dead easy to map a domain to a static IP. It had some security benefits, too-- if one site was compromised, it wouldn't affect the rest. But it was also maintenance-intensive. I needed to login to multiple servers to run updates; adding plugins had to be redone over and over on each server; and obviously this was starting to get expensive. So I decided to consolidate my multiple sites on one server, using a fancy feature of WordPress called... "*Multisite*". Imaginative name, I know. The initial configuration went well, with no real hiccups (other than my accidentally rm'ing most of Apache's configuration files-- but a quick droplet rebuild took care of that).((Yes, I could have restored the configuration without too much difficulty, but I was early enough in the build that it was faster to just start over.)) The trouble started when I had moved over the sites I was consolidating, and switched the domains to point at my new Multisite server. I spent two hours trying to figure out why one of the domains refused to point at the new server, only to discover (drumroll, please)... it was DNS. I use Pi-Hole on my home network to block malicious sites, but it also provides a DNS caching service which usually works great. In this case, however, it was pointing me back at the old server over and over, until the TTL finally expired.((I did set the TTL to a very low number when I started this process, but the old value wasn't updated until the original one expired.)) A quick flush of the DNS cache, and I was able to see that the domain was correctly configured. Fifteen minutes later, I had SSL up and my plugins configured. So what's the lesson in all this? Even when you think it's not DNS... it's DNS. ### Memcached abuse opens door to massive DDoS attacks URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/memcached-abuse-opens-door-to-massive-ddos-attacks/ Last updated: 2018-02-27T23:20:53.000Z A new reflection attack was unveiled today which can increase the size of a DDoS attack by 51,000-fold. It uses memcached, an object caching system designed to speed up web applications, to amplify attacks against a target. This represents a substantial increase from previous attacks, which have used network time servers to amplify attacks 58-fold and DNS servers to amplify attacks 50-fold. Attacks seen this week have surpassed 500 Gbps, which is pretty amazing considering only a small percentage of publicly-available memcached servers are being used to launch those attacks. It'll be interesting to see if any larger attacks are launched in the coming weeks... and what their targets will be. The [article over at Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/in-the-wild-ddoses-use-new-way-to-achieve-unthinkable-sizes/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) is pretty good, and is worth a read. ### New Apache Web Server bug can reveal server memory to attackers URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/new-apache-web-server-bug-can-reveal-server-memory-to-attackers/ Last updated: 2017-09-20T03:10:55.000Z Another day, another vulnerability in a widely-used software package. Today's bug (dubbed [Optionsbleed](https://blog.fuzzing-project.org/60-Optionsbleed-HTTP-OPTIONS-method-can-leak-Apaches-server-memory.html?ref=ryanbrooks.net) by Hanno Böck, the journalist who documented the vulnerability) can reveal passwords and other pieces of vital information to attackers. While not as big of a threat as Heartbleed, a similar bug which allowed attackers to snag private encryption keys for servers (which is a Bad Thing, since this is how servers verify they are who they say they are; for an explanation of how this works, see my [Asymmetric Encryption explanation](https://ryanbrooks.net/what-is-asymmetric-cryptography/) from last year), this should still be regarded as a significant threat. Patches are being rolled out now; patch your systems if you haven't already. ### New WordPress Vulnerability Results in ~2 Million Defaced Sites URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/new-wordpress-vulnerability-results-in-2-million-defaced-sites/ Last updated: 2017-02-12T06:14:43.000Z The vulnerability was patched in WordPress v4.7.2 two weeks ago, but millions of sites haven't yet updated. This leaves them open to a [vulnerability in the WordPress REST API](https://blog.sucuri.net/2017/02/content-injection-vulnerability-wordpress-rest-api.html?ref=ryanbrooks.net), which can allow malicious actors to edit any post on a site. [Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/virally-growing-attacks-on-unpatched-wordpress-sites-affects-2m-pages/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) has a very nice writeup on the effects of the exploit, which has resulted in the defacement of a staggering number of websites (including the websites of Glenn Beck, the Utah Office of Tourism, and even the official Suse Linux site). [Sucuri](https://blog.sucuri.net/2017/02/wordpress-rest-api-vulnerability-abused-in-defacement-campaigns.html?ref=ryanbrooks.net) and [Wordfence](https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2017/02/rapid-growth-in-rest-api-defacements/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) also have very good articles about the effects of the vulnerability. If you have a WordPress site, you should immediately check to make sure you're on the latest version (v4.7.2). ### Is it time to abandon antivirus software? URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/is-it-time-to-abandon-antivirus-software/ Last updated: 2017-01-28T07:05:04.000Z I've noticed a growing trend in more advanced computer users lately: some of them have begun advocating against using antivirus software. Instead, they suggest using browser extensions like [uBlock Origin](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) (which I use and recommend), combined with safe browsing practices, to remove the need for antivirus software altogether. Ars Technica did a [very nice write-up](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/01/antivirus-is-bad/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) on this trend today, and it's worth a look. For what it's worth, I still use Avast as an antivirus package. But it hasn't alerted me to any issues or found any viruses in at least a year, so perhaps it's time to consider freeing up some memory on my computer. ### New Host! URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/new-host/ Last updated: 2016-12-29T19:04:42.000Z I've finally moved to a VPS on DigitalOcean, from my previous (free) shared hosting. I did this for a couple of reasons: first, while my hosting was free for a year with my domain name, that year was almost up. To renew my hosting for the second+ year, I would have needed to pay $38.88/year; while that's a decent price, I looked at my options and decided that moving to DigitalOcean wouldn't cost much more (around $30 more across the year, since I use the weekly backups option), would give me much more control over my server (now I get SSH access!), and would centralize all of my VPS instances in the same place (I've used DigitalOcean for several years to host various projects). Of course, as with so many things, this migration wasn't sparked by a simple glance at the calendar. While I've intended to move my host for the last month or two, the timing was decided by my messing up a WordPress upgrade on the old site at the beginning of December. I used the automatic updater, ignored the warnings about making sure everything was backed up first,((I didn't *actually* ignore this warning. I had a backup plugin configured on the site; I figured I could probably roll back if I really needed to.)) and told it to apply the new version. When WordPress exited maintenance mode, I was locked out of the administration dashboard. The public part of the website was still up and running, but the backend was locked off. Since I was entering finals week at my university, I decided to just let it be until I had some time to come back and fix it. Worst-case, I had backups I could restore from, and I'd been meaning to migrate my site anyway. Of course, things didn't work out that way. When I finally had some time on Christmas Eve, I discovered that a complete backup hadn't been made in months. https://twitter.com/kc0wir/status/812555978885529600 Yes, I committed the cardinal sin of not verifying the state of my backups. Apparently I'd screwed something up with their configuration, and I'd never tried to restore from them before and hadn't noticed until I needed them. At this point, I decided that if the backups weren't working, there was no point in trying to recover on a host that I was going to be abandoning within a month, and I spun up a WordPress droplet on DigitalOcean to hold the rebuilt site. https://twitter.com/kc0wir/status/812556462950141953 I still had copies of all the content that was on the site, so I'd be able to restore everything without much trouble. Some copy/pasting and time would be required, but I could get everything back to the way it was without too much trouble. But before I did all of that, I thought "what if I'm overlooking something really simple with the old site?" I did a little searching, and apparently W3 Total Cache, which I used to create static pages for my site and decrease load times, can cause problems with WordPress upgrades. I disabled that via FTP,((If you're in a similar situation, just renaming the plugin folder to something else-- w3-total-cache to w3-total-cache123, for example-- will disable it)) reloaded the site, and I was able to access the admin area again. Turns out the simple steps that you should take before completely rebuilding everything are actually worth it. https://twitter.com/kc0wir/status/812586347286380544 Since I had already spun up and started configuring my new site, I decided to press onwards. My task was made considerably easier by my being able to access WP Clone on the original site, which let me move everything from my old site to the new one in just a few minutes. I redirected the nameservers to DigitalOcean, and ran a few last checks before calling the bulk of my work done. The next day, when I was tidying up some loose ends and preparing to get SSL set up, I realized that my email no longer worked-- my email server resided on the same server that hosted my old website, which meant I needed to find a new solution. https://twitter.com/kc0wir/status/812916252230451200 While I have been meaning to setup my own email server sometime soon, I wasn't confident in my ability to get it up and running quickly, and email is one of those vital services I depend on working 100% of the time. In years past, I would have simply used Google Apps((Which is now G Suite, but that sounds silly.)) to host my email, but that is no longer the free option it once was. Luckily, I found a solution thanks to Ian Macalinao at [Simply Ian](https://simplyian.com/?ref=ryanbrooks.net), which is to [use Mailgun as a free email server](https://simplyian.com/2015/01/07/Hacking-GMail-to-use-custom-domains-for-free/?ref=ryanbrooks.net). Mailgun is designed to send out massive email blasts for major companies, but they also offer a free tier for people and companies that are sending out fewer than 10,000 emails per month. I send out a fraction of that number, so this was perfect for me (and their mass email prices seem quite reasonable, so I might even use them for that if the need ever arises). Ian handily provided a set of instructions for how to setup the proper routing, and, while some of the menu options have changed, I was able to get my new email up and running within a few minutes. https://twitter.com/kc0wir/status/813158354956779520 So I'd managed to get both the site and my email up and running, but I still couldn't get SSL up and running. For those that don't know, SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, and it's what powers the little green padlock that you see on your address bar when you visit your bank, or PayPal, or this website. [I wrote an explanation on how it works](https://ryanbrooks.net/what-is-asymmetric-cryptography/) a while back, and I suggest checking that out if you want to learn more. One of the benefits of hosting my website on a VPS is that I don't need to use the major third-party SSL providers to get certificates saying my server is who it says it is; I can use the free and open [Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) certificate authority instead. Unfortunately, I just couldn't get the certificate to work correctly; the automated tool was unable to connect to my server and verify it, which meant that the auto-renewal process wouldn't complete. I could have generated an offline certificate and used that, but the certificates only last ninety days and I wasn't looking forward to going through the setup process every three months.((It's a pretty straightforward and simple process, I just know that I would forget about it at some point, the certificate would expire, and the site would have issues. If I can automate that issue away, I would much rather do that.)) I tried creating new Virtual Hosts files for Apache, my web server, but that just created more of a problem. Eventually, I figured out that I had misconfigured something somewhere along the line. Rather than try to figure out which of the dozens of edits I had made was the problem, I gave up and just reverted back to a snapshot I had made before starting down the rabbit hole.((Snapshots are essentially DigitalOcean's version of creating disk images of your server. I absolutely love snapshots; they've saved my bacon more than once, and I try to always take one before I embark on any major system changes.)) After reverting to back before my virtual hosts meddling, I was able to successfully run the Let's Encrypt tool, generate my certificate, and secure my site. https://twitter.com/kc0wir/status/813185131301183488 > At least, I shouldn't have tried without reading \*all\* of the documentation first. :) > > — Ryan Brooks (@kc0wir) [December 26, 2016](https://twitter.com/kc0wir/status/813185267691638785?ref=ryanbrooks.net) Lesson learned! --- *Photo credit* [*Torkild Retvedt.*](https://flic.kr/p/6gYLHR?ref=ryanbrooks.net) ### Clinton's Email Server URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/clintons-email-server/ Last updated: 2016-07-16T23:06:49.000Z Ars Technica did a nice job of creating an impartial write-up on why Hillary Clinton used an external email server, and how it was actually used. It sounds to me like there's an institutional history of using private email to conduct business, largely due to obstructive or incompetent IT services (in fairness to the State Department IT team, there are likely a number of complicated policies and legal requirements that they're trying to work around, which is difficult). Still, that's not an excuse to use a home server to manage official communication-- if you *must* use your own email address, at least use something like Google Apps or Microsoft Exchange Online, where you have teams of people professionally managing the email environment. \[\[Of course, there is still the issue of all email traffic being unsecured and transmitted in plaintext. But you could use a PGP solution to reduce risks there.)) It's also interesting to see that the NSA basically shot down any possibility of her getting a secured mobile device; I would have thought that providing the Secretary of State-- the person who comes fourth in the presidential line of succession-- with secure communications at all time would be a priority for them. You can read the full story [here](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/indifference-and-ignorance-delving-deep-into-the-clinton-e-mail-saga/?ref=ryanbrooks.net). --- ### Uncertainty, the Fed, and the Economy URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/uncertainty-fed-economy/ Last updated: 2016-05-29T06:28:57.000Z The *New York Times* published [this opinion piece](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/do-nothingism-a-fine-idea-for-the-fed.html?ref=ryanbrooks.net) recently, discussing the Fed's continuing decision to delay raising rates. While the entire article is interesting, I believe that the final paragraph is the most insightful: > Adding to the frustration is that Fed policy is not to blame for the economy’s underperformance. Congress bears much of the blame because of its tightfisted federal budgets when more government spending is needed to offset feeble spending and investment in the private sector. Still, sound policy making by the Fed requires answering to conditions as they are, not as policy makers might wish they were. Right now, we should be spending money to stimulate the economy-- cutting back is *incredibly* short-sighted, and could seriously damage the economy. We should look back at other economic downturns from the past-- the Great Depression, for example, was ended not by *restricting* government spending, but by massively increasing it (and by abolishing the gold standard, which let to the restriction in the first place)-- and learn from them. Economists have studied recessions for many years, and the Fed has done an admirable job in regulating the U.S. economy through this entire mess. Politicians, however, often don't understand the data, or are politically unable to make the best long-term policy. For this reason, they should seek to reduce uncertainty in U.S. markets.Economic uncertainty is a larger problem in the United States than we may care to admit. John C. Williams, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, gave a [2012 speech](http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2012/january/federal-reserve-economic-recovery/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) in which he said that uncertainty was one of the largest problems facing the U.S. economy today: > By almost any measure, uncertainty is high. Businesses are uncertain about the economic environment and the direction of economic policy. Households are uncertain about job prospects and future incomes. Political gridlock in Washington, D.C., and the crisis in Europe add to a sense of foreboding. I repeatedly hear from my business contacts that these uncertainties are prompting them to slow investment and hiring. As one of them put it, uncertainty is causing firms to “step back from the playing field.” Economists at the San Francisco Fed calculate that uncertainty has reduced consumer and business spending so much that it has potentially added a full percentage point to the unemployment rate. Obviously, with unemployment at 5.0% today,((When he gave that speech, the unemployment rate was at 8.3%, and the Economic Uncertainty Index (EUI) was at 178.3; today the latest numbers for the EUI place the United States near 98.3\. I was unable to find any data correlating the EUI with specific unemployment rates, so at this time I cannot estimate how much of our present unemployment is a result of uncertainty in the economy.)) having uncertainty raise the unemployment a full percentage point is no small matter. And on average, economic uncertainty is increasing—according to data collected by Scott Baker, Nicholas Bloom and Steven J. Davis in “Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty” over at [PolicyUncertainty.com](http://www.policyuncertainty.com/?ref=ryanbrooks.net), economic uncertainty has been trending upwards for the past fifteen years. ![A chart showing the rate of economic uncertainty, along with an upwards trend line, between April 2001 and April 2016.](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/2026/07/Economic-Uncertainty-2001-2016.png) Obviously, this trend is heavily influenced by the 2008 recession, but I find it interesting that it may be beginning to rise again. This is possibly a result of the fluctuating oil markets, combined with the slowdown of China's economy; but no matter the cause both the Fed and the government should seek to reduce uncertainty and continue to promote stability in the economy. --- *Listing image by* [*William Warby*](https://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/?ref=ryanbrooks.net)*.* ### Hacking the Hackers URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/hacking-the-hackers/ Last updated: 2016-04-20T01:08:06.000Z Have you ever heard of Hacking Team? It's an Italian company specializing in "digital infiltration" products for governments, law enforcement agencies, and large corporations. Simply put, they sell hacking tools. You might think, given their business model, that they would monitor their own security religiously. Last year, however, [they were hacked](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/hacking-team-hacked-spy-tools-sold-oppressive-regimes-sudan-bahrain-kazakhstan-1509460?ref=ryanbrooks.net). [Majorly hacked](https://web.archive.org/web/20150706010312/https:/twitter.com/hackingteam). "[Hundreds of Gb](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/617865712611233792?ref=ryanbrooks.net)" of their internal files, [emails](https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/?ref=ryanbrooks.net), documents, and source code for their products were released online for all to inspect, as were their unencrypted passwords. ((By the way, here's some advice: if you are in security (or anything, really, this isn't security-specific) you should really make sure your passwords are more secure than ["P4ssword", "wolverine", and "universo"](http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-wonder-hacking-team-got-hacked/?ref=ryanbrooks.net). Use a [passphrase](https://xkcd.com/936/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) instead.)) Also released was a [list of their customers](https://motherboard.vice.com/read/here-are-all-the-sketchy-government-agencies-buying-hacking-teams-spy-tech?ref=ryanbrooks.net), which included the governments of the United States, Russia, and Sudan—the last being a country controlled by an oppressive regime that has been [embargoed by the E.U.](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/arms-embargo-on-sudan?ref=ryanbrooks.net) ((As an Italian company, this means that they were technically violating the embargo.)) Last Friday, the person claiming responsibility for the attack, "Phineas Phisher", came forward with [details about how they did it](http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ?ref=ryanbrooks.net). It's worth reading through if you're interested in security; if you'd like an explanation geared more towards the layperson, [Ars Technica has a pretty good write-up/summary of the attack](https://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04/how-hacking-team-got-hacked-phineas-phisher/?ref=ryanbrooks.net). I was particularly struck by how they gained access to the network. According to Phineas, > Hacking Team had very little exposed to the internet. For example, unlike Gamma Group, their customer support site needed a client certificate to connect. What they had was their main website (a Joomla blog in which [Joomscan](http://sourceforge.net/projects/joomscan/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) didn't find anything serious), a mail server, a couple routers, two VPN appliances, and a spam filtering appliance... I had three options: look for a 0day in Joomla, look for a 0day in postfix, or look for a 0day in one of the embedded devices. A 0day in an embedded device seemed like the easiest option, and after two weeks of work reverse engineering, I got a remote root exploit... I did a lot of work and testing before using the exploit against Hacking Team. I wrote a backdoored firmware, and compiled various post-exploitation tools for the embedded device. Basically, to avoid detection, Phineas discovered a unique vulnerability ((These unique vulnerabilities are called a "zero-day" in computer security circles, because the hackers find it before the company maintaining the software or device does— so once the company finds it, they have zero days to mitigate damage.)) in one of their embedded devices (likely one of their routers), figured out how to use it to get into the rest of the network using that vulnerability, and then carried out the attack through that piece of hardware without anybody noticing. No matter your feelings about the attack, this is an impressive feat. --- ### Orchids at the Missouri Botanical Garden URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/orchids-missouri-botanical-garden/ Last updated: 2016-03-28T02:16:33.000Z The [Missouri Botanical Garden's Orchid Show](http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/things-to-do/events/signature-events/orchid-show.aspx?ref=ryanbrooks.net) ended today. I went on a date there yesterday to visit the Garden and see the show. ((Luckily, my girlfriend didn't mind my bringing my camera along.)) I honestly didn't know that there were this many different types of orchid; there were one or two hundred different varieties on display, and the Botanical Garden boasts more than 3,200 different species of orchid in their collection. I took quite a few close shots of the orchids, and I've included my favorites below. I've made slight adjustments to try to bring out their colors, and to emphasize their structures, but I've tried to keep everything as true-to-life as is possible. ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7256-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7260-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7261-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7263-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7273-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7286-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7290-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7293-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7294-scaled.jpg) While at the Garden, I also took a walk through the rest of their grounds. While I put my camera away for much of it, I did get a few nice shots of various plants and trees. ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7306-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7313-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7314-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7327-scaled.jpg) ![](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/edited-7347-scaled.jpg) I had an awesome time taking photos and walking around. It was a little crowded, but still pretty nice. I don't really make it over to the Garden as much as I would like to, but hopefully I'll have a chance to visit another time or two during spring break. --- ### What is asymmetric cryptography? URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/what-is-asymmetric-cryptography/ Last updated: 2016-03-02T03:39:11.000Z Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman were jointly awarded the 2015 ACM A.M. Turing Award today. Their 1976 paper, [*New Directions in Cryptography*](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2730231-24.html?ref=ryanbrooks.net), essentially created asymmetric cryptography. Today, asymmetric cryptography secures our online communications—from [PGP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty%5FGood%5FPrivacy?ref=ryanbrooks.net)\-secured texts, emails, and files, to [TLS and SSL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport%5FLayer%5FSecurity?ref=ryanbrooks.net)\-secured websites (including this one). So how does asymmetric cryptography work, and how is the Diffie-Hellman key exchange more secure than older methods of encryption? ## Symmetric encryption Symmetric encryption relies on a key ((Essentially, a key is a piece of really complicated math.)) shared between two or more people. A message is encrypted using this key, and can then be decrypted by the same key held by somebody else. Think of it like the front door of a house. Alice has a key to the door, so she can lock and unlock the door. Bob also has a key, so he can *also* lock and unlock the door. In fact, anyone with a copy of that key can both lock and unlock the door whenever they want. In the case of a message, this means that anyone with the right key can *encrypt* (lock) the message, or *decrypt* (unlock) the message. It's possible to break symmetric encryption ((It's also possible to break asymmetric encryption, or *any* encryption)), though it takes time. Perhaps one of the most famous examples is from World War II, when the Allies were struggling to crack encrypted Nazi communications. The encryption was created with a key that changed daily, and through the use of the Enigma machines. The cryptography was eventually broken, but largely through the skill of the codebreakers, poor operating practice from some of the German operators, and the capture of key tables and hardware by the Allies. ## Asymmetric encryption Asymmetric encryption, in contrast to symmetric encryption, uses a pair of keys to encrypt messages. One of the two keys is made public to everyone, and one is kept private (the two types of keys were called, cleverly enough, the *public key* and the *private key*, respectively). Messages encrypted with the public key can *only* be decrypted using the private key ((Basically, the message is sent through a mathematical formula that only works one way... unless you have the incredibly complicated and unique formula that comprises the private key.)), which ensures that the contents of the message can't be read by anyone except the holder of the (hopefully secure) private key. So if Alice wants to send an encrypted message to Bob, she starts by finding his public key. She then encrypts her message using that, and sends it to Bob. When Bob receives it, he uses his private key to decrypt the message. If he wants to respond, he can encrypt his reply using Alice's public key, and the cycle continues. Since the public keys are usually published or exchanged in a way that lets each party be confident that it belongs to whomever they are sending it to, this ensures that the identity of the recipient can be verified. Alice knows that only Bob can unlock her message, and Bob knows that only Alice can unlock his. This is commonly used on websites that are secured by SSL/TLS (including this one). Pretty much every major website is secured via SSL, and browsers will display a green padlock in the address bar of secured sites. This serves two purposes; it will prove that the website belongs to whomever it purports to belong to, and it encrypts traffic between your computer and the website so that it can't be read by attackers, your ISP, or others who may have a vested interest in what you do. This works in exactly the same way that the messages between Alice and Bob did. When you visit a website secured with SSL, your browser and the server exchange public keys. The server encrypts traffic to you using your public key, which your browser decrypts. And your browser encrypts traffic to the server using the *server's* public key, which the *server* decrypts. Anyone trying to listen in on the conversation your browser and the server are having will hear nothing but random gibberish. There's one additional thing that your browser does to ensure that it's not talking to a fake server that's pretending to be the real website: it takes the public key presented by the server, and it compares it to a repository of public keys. If it matches, it's the real server. If it doesn't, it could be an imposter-- and somebody could be listening in. So the next time you're wandering around the web, take a minute to appreciate that little green padlock in the corner of your screen, and think about the incredibly complicated math that underpins security on the internet. It works invisibly to keep your communications safe, secure, and most importantly—private. --- *I'm not a cryptographer or a security specialist, just somebody who enjoys reading and learning about security. If you think I left out something important, please* [*send me an email*](mailto:ryan@ryanbrooks.net) *so I can fix it.* ### Email server admins are underappreciated URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/server-admins-are-underappreciated/ Last updated: 2016-01-28T03:26:55.000Z Today I reconfigured a server I maintain for the Office of Residential Life and Housing. It broke yesterday because of a database issue, but I've taken this as an opportunity to rebuild and improve it with an included email server. I have it mostly up and running now, but it's been a long, slow process that took far longer than I expected it to (as a sidenote, this would have been far easier if the backups I had were up-to-date. Always check your backups!) Building an email server is more difficult than I expected. I almost expected to just run `sudo apt-get install postfix` and have an email server up and running; sure, it would need some configuration, but I'd be able to start sending and receiving mail almost immediately. And yes, that might be true if I installed something like [Mail-in-a-Box](https://mailinabox.email/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) or [iRedMail](http://www.iredmail.org/?ref=ryanbrooks.net), but I decided that that was too easy, jumped into the deep end, and immediately started configuring a mail server using Postfix, Dovecot, MySQL, and Spamassassin (and would have been instantly lost if it hadn't been for [this awesome guide](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-a-mail-server-using-postfix-dovecot-mysql-and-spamassassin?ref=ryanbrooks.net)). So I spent twelve hours copying and adapting code to my purpose, rewriting databases, adding users, restarting when I messed up. It was absolutely awesome. There's something about taking the blank screen of a terminal, typing commands across it, and making something *work*. When you reload the page and it actually works the way you want it to, there is an immense feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. You took something that was blank and empty, and turned it into something *useful*. There's no feeling quite like it in the world. That said, I'm totally using one of the ready-to-deploy email servers next time. Making something work is fantastic when you have the time to do that, but sometimes you just really need to have whatever you're working on to be up and running. *Listing image by* [*RobH*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:RobH?ref=ryanbrooks.net)*, from* [*Wikimedia*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wmf%5Fsdtpa%5Fservers%5F2009-01-20%5F36.jpg?ref=ryanbrooks.net)*. Used under the* [*Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported*](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en?ref=ryanbrooks.net) *license.* ### How Stories Drive the Stock Market URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/how-stories-drive-the-stock-market/ Last updated: 2016-01-22T23:31:55.000Z I came across [this article](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/upshot/how-stories-drive-the-stock-market.html?ref=ryanbrooks.net) today in *The New York Times* written by [Robert Shiller](http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/?ref=ryanbrooks.net). Shiller is a Sterling Professor at Yale University who studies macroeconomics, behavioral economics, and public attitudes regarding markets, so he's very qualified to discuss the role of stories in our economy. The general gist of the article, as I understand it, is that stock markets are driven as much by feelings and stories than they are by data and rationality. It underscores the need to critically inspect information that you're given-- it may be rooted in truth, but it could easily be influenced by emotion. It also underscores why economic predictions can be so difficult to get right, and why economics is a social science; our assumptions are rooted in the belief that people are rational actors who carefully make the best decisions possible, even though people are famously irrational. If we're driven by stories and emotions, it's much harder to predict people's actions and reactions. *Listing image by* [*Sam valadi*](https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/?ref=ryanbrooks.net)*, and used under the* [*Creative Commons Attribution 2.0*](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=ryanbrooks.net) *license.* ### The Panic of 1907 URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/the1907panic/ Last updated: 2016-01-18T06:24:27.000Z The Panic of 1907 crippled the financial markets, brought ruin to banks and trust companies, all but bankrupted the Treasury of the United States of America, and required the intervention of J.P. Morgan to end. And it directly led to the founding of the Federal Reserve System in the United States, in 1913\. I was researching the crisis this past semester while taking my History of American Economic Development class at the University of Missouri — Saint Louis (I took it with Professor Rogers, and I recommend it highly). I wrote my final paper on the crisis, though I ended up relying on just two primary sources. Immediately after the semester ended I found several others that would have been very useful in my research—I'm planning to go back and revise this to include them, but I haven't done it yet. --- The events leading to the panic began on October 14th, 1907, after a wealthy investor overextended himself while attempting to corner the market in copper. ![F.A. Heinze in 1904](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/2026/07/Augustus_Heinze_1910.jpg) F.A. Heinze in 1904 F. A. Heinze lost more than $50 million dollars in under a day after investors realized what he was attempting, and the United Copper Company’s shares fell from $62/share to less than $15/share. (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston 3) On its own, this would have been disastrous for Heinze and other copper speculators, but would have little effect on other investors. Heinze, however, was the owner of the State Savings Bank of Butte Montana, which became insolvent almost immediately due to its holding large amounts of United Copper Company shares as collateral. Heinze was also president of the Mercantile National Bank—and once depositors learned of his financial peril, they rushed to withdraw their monies from that institution as quickly as was possible. Heinze was forced to resign his position from the Mercantile National Bank on the morning of October 17th, but the damage was done. Depositors began removing money from the Mercantile National Bank to deposit it in other banks in the area. At this point, the panic had not yet truly begun. The financial markets were still feeling the effects of Heinze’s manipulations, and his banks were collapsing, but the overall system was still sound. And then it was discovered that one of the directors of the Mercantile National Bank, Charles Morse, controlled seven other New York banks and had been heavily involved in the copper speculation. He was removed from those banks, but depositors at those banks had already begun removing their money. (Tallman and Moen 4) Next to fall was the trusts, starting with Knickerbocker Trust Company, the third-largest trust in New York. J.P. Morgan, widely seen as the last hope for the trust, decided to not provide aid—a decision which led to the trust paying out $8 million to its depositors during a period of three hours on October 22nd, and immediately suspending operations. Another trust, the Trust Company of America, was also hit hard and paid out $47.5 million of their $60 million of total deposits in a period of two weeks. J.P. Morgan, J.D. Rockefeller, and Secretary of the Treasury George Cortelyou deposited a combined $38 million into the trusts and banks to prop them up and allow them to continue operating. (Tallman and Moen 8) ![J.P. Morgan, who singlehandedly kept the Panic of 1907 from expanding](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/2026/07/JohnPierpontMorgan.png) J.P. Morgan Meanwhile, the stock market was in trouble. Brokers regularly borrow and lend money to buy and sell shares of stock, but by October 24th that borrowable money was in extremely short supply. It was only through Morgan’s convincing the banks to loan $25 million to the stock market that the stock market was able to make it through the day; the next day was even more of a struggle, with banks being more and more unwilling to lend. In fact, banks were extremely unwilling to lend to anyone, whether it be fellow banks or to the general public, leading to a shortage of currency in the economy. To add to the difficulty, the city of New York began running out of funds, and was unable to obtain more. Morgan loaned $30 million to the city, allowing them to continue operations. (Tallman and Moen 10) The panic eventually ended by mid-November, when Morgan convinced the trust companies and banks to support each other during runs. But the situation showed the necessity of an organization dedicated to ensuring that panics were minimized and dealt with in the best way possible; relying on a single man such as Morgan to organize the response was impractical and foolhardy. J.P. Morgan died on March 31st, 1913, which ended any chance of his being able to repeat his 1907 actions. In December of that year, Congress voted to approve the Federal Reserve Act, which established the United States Federal Reserve. Despite the intentions of its creators, the Federal Reserve was unable to prevent the Great Depression (though I believe that that’s more because of its reliance on the gold standard, which prevented it from printing money to pay off debts and bail out banks, than of anything else. There’s some evidence for this—when the gold standard was temporarily suspended, the economy immediately began to do better). Looking back at the 1907 Panic, it’s clear that there were few regulatory oversights. Indeed, there was little government involvement at all—J.P. Morgan basically controlled the entire response, including controlling where the money was being allocated to fight the panic, and how it was handled in the press. The Treasury *did* place $37.6 million in the banks to help secure them, and supplied an additional $36 million to help alleviate runs on banks, but that expended their total power (after doing that, the Treasury’s working capital had dwindled to $5 million). (Tallman and Moen 8) This would indicate that the market can self-regulate to a degree, at least when getting *out* of a bad situation, provided there’s someone who is well-versed in how to allocate large sums of money to get things done. ![Charles Morse, one of the bankers at the center of the Panic](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/charles-morse.png) Charles Morse It’s also clear that allowing people who own or manage banks to engage in speculation with bank money, no matter how well-founded and reliable they believe it to be, is foolhardy. If Heinze and Morse had lost their own fortunes, it wouldn’t have caused a panic. It was only when it was discovered that they were using their banks to help finance their personal speculation that the bank runs started, and the panic took off. In addition, allowing one person to outright control three banks and heavily influence four others, as in the case of Charles Morse, does not seem like a particularly good idea for anyone involved. I believe that if that were to happen today people would probably be concerned about conflict of interest and moral hazard (and for very good reason). All in all, the Panic of 1907 could have been much, much worse. Instead of bank runs, sensational headlines, and a nice story for the economics textbooks illustrating the need for a central bank to keep everything running smoothly, it could have ended in a huge economic downturn that could have heralded in the Great Depression somewhat earlier than it did (or at least a fairly major recession; the Great Depression was a worldwide event, not something that was restricted to the United States). Instead, due largely to J.P. Morgan’s acting as a central banker and lender of last resort, it lasted scarcely a month and served mostly as a warning for the perils of an unregulated financial system. Works cited: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. "Panic of 1907." n.d. *The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.* [PDF](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/files/www-bostonfed-org/about/pubs/panicof1.pdf). Tallman, Ellis and Jon Moen. "Lessons from the Panic of 1907." *Economic Review* (1990): 2-13\. [PDF](http://www.frbatlanta.org/filelegacydocs/ern390%5Ftallman.pdf?ref=ryanbrooks.net). *Note about references: While originally researching this paper, I was unable to find many other quality resources regarding the panic (at least, not many that were online). If you can recommend further resources, please contact me and let me know! I would love to revise this piece to include them.* ### Controlling and Ending Inflation URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/controlling-ending-inflation/ Last updated: 2015-05-31T03:30:25.000Z *This is another adapted essay from my classes. This particular essay was my paper for my Monetary Policy class in the spring of 2015\. I've cleaned it up a little, and adapted it for a blog format, but it is largely as it was in the spring of 2015.* --- Inflation and hyperinflation is a topic that isn’t always well-understood by the general public. Those who know nothing about how inflation and hyperinflation work tend to believe that moderate inflation is good, and hyperinflation is bad—not the worst impression in the world, but also not a terribly accurate one. Fortunately for the uninformed (which included me), the author of *Monetary Regimes and Inflation*, Peter Bernholz, is a bona fide expert on the subject of inflation (and literally wrote the book on it). Bernholz spends much of his book discussing what a hyperinflation is, and how it should be ended. According to him, to end a hyperinflation you must replace the hyperinflating currency with another. A hyperinflation, defined in this essay as when the monthly inflation rate goes above fifty percent, is a death-knell for a currency. Public trust in it has been eroded to the point where it is extremely unlikely that it will recover; foreign banks will refuse it; its effective value is near or at zero, and it is poisoning your economy. Replacing it with a new currency will allow [Thiers' Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s%5Flaw?ref=ryanbrooks.net#Reverse%5Fof%5FGresham.27s%5FLaw%5F.28Thiers.27%5FLaw.29) to come into effect so that the new, non-hyperinflating currency can drive out the older currency and restore some order to the economy. But how do more moderate inflations start? We know that constant inflation is a relatively recent occurrence, since, until all currencies became fiat, there was always a hard cap on how much money could be printed—namely, a certain multiple of the value of the gold a nation had on hand. Prior to fiat currency, inflation would occur in a couple of different ways. During wartimes, when convertibility was suspended, currency would often be inflated as a tax to fund the war; when a large stock of whatever backed a currency was discovered, that currency would inflate as the stock entered the money supply (which is why we don’t use leaves as currency—the ability to say that money *does* grow on trees would probably have deleterious effects on our economy ((Notably, this failed completely in Douglas Adams' *The Restaurant at the End of the Universe*; after adopting the leaf as a form of currency, and then suffering from massive inflation, a campaign to burn down all the forests was undertaken.))); by changing the convertibility of your currency to its commodity backing, you could change the value of your currency and cause inflation. Milton Friedman was of the opinion that inflation is undesirable for an economy. A subscriber of the Quantity Theory of Money, he believed that Keynesian economics “\[ignored\] the theory and historical evidence that linked inflation to excessive growth in the money stock and depression to money shrinkage” (White 313). He supported the suspension of gold convertibility in 1971, as he hoped it would lead to tighter restrictions on the money supply, lowering inflation (White 309). He supported the 1970 appointment of his friend and mentor, Arthur Burns, as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve for the same reason (White 306). Unfortunately for him, his hopes were dashed on both counts—Burns ended up advocating for measures Friedman strongly disagreed with, and the ending of the Bretton Woods system did not end either money growth or inflation. In fact, Nixon’s ending of the Bretton Woods gold convertibility program, which was originally established in 1944, did exactly the opposite of what Friedman wanted. Up until the convertibility was dissolved, every country had fixed the price of its currency relative to the U.S. Dollar; the dollar was the world’s reserve currency, and was exchangeable (for monetary authorities, if not the general public) for gold. When Nixon ended that convertibility in 1971, it sparked a series of inflations around the world. To combat this and end the inflation, many countries joined the European Monetary System (which began in 1972, and continued until 1978). Known as the European “Currency Snake”, its goal was to fix the value of each currency relative to each other, and limit inflation, which it did by requiring member countries to keep the exchange rates of their different currencies within a narrow band (within ±2.25% of other member currencies) (Higgins 4). Countries were not required to remain in the Snake (France exited the Snake in 1974, re-entered in 1975, and exited again in 1976), but those countries in the Snake tended to have lower inflation rates (Germany’s inflation rate from 1973-1977 was 5.34 percent; France’s inflation rate was 10.24 percent) (Bernholz 153). Officially the Snake didn’t rely on one currency to value the others, but in practice the Deutschmark was used to value the other currencies due to the highly stable nature of the German Bundesbank (Higgins 4). After the collapse of the Snake in 1978, the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was established in 1979 to do basically the same thing. And, functionally speaking, very little changed. The required exchange rates between countries were left unchanged, the Deutschmark was used to value other currencies, and inflation rates in member countries tended to be lower than rates in non-member countries (Higgins). Besides pegging your currency to another, more stable currency (or to a group of other currencies), what can you do to combat moderate inflation? It turns out that moving onto a metallic-based currency works rather well. According to Bernholz, Argentina experienced a period of higher-than-desired inflation in the 1890s (Bernholz 146). After a series of bank runs, and the collapse of the Banco Nacional and the Bank of the Province of Buenos Aires in 1890, the Argentinian government halted the payment of foreign debt, reduced the number of banknotes in circulation, and ceased incurring foreign debt. The results were less than desirable for the economy; both the exchange rate and the export price index declined, and industries were hurt by the still-rising wage level (Bernholz 147). Eventually, in 1899 the Argentinian government passed a conversion law requiring the exchange of 227.27 paper pesos for 100 gold pesos. Bernholz notes that there was not enough gold to maintain this conversion rate, but that it did not matter, for the currency was still undervalued. Argentina went on a gold buying spree, and embarked on a period of high economic growth. Switching to a metallic standard works because it forces a limit on how much money can be created by the government or central bank (if the country has one). Since little gold is introduced into the money supply each year compared to the amount of paper money that can be printed, it’s a decent way of putting the brakes on inflation and restoring trust in your economy. Yet another way to end your inflation, according to Bernholz, is to create an independent central bank (Bernholz 157). A central bank is in a position to create and remove money from the economy; it acts as a lender of last resort, should it need to; and it can efficiently regulate the economy and the money supply (hopefully) without interference from political goals that might otherwise destabilize a currency. As we’ve seen in this class, this is often an unrealistic goal—and the appointment of Arthur Burns as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1970 is a very good example of why. Despite Burns’ belief in the quantity theory, as his student Friedman was, he was pressured to finance America’s war in Vietnam by printing money—which lead to massive inflation in the mid-1970s. So is inflation good for an economy? Or does it hurt the economy more than it helps? There are very good arguments for both sides. Personally, I believe that a constant inflation is more or less a requirement for the U.S. economy *as it stands today*. We’re not about to cut our spending to where it can be supported by the taxes collected by the IRS, so using inflation as a tax is about the only realistic way to maintain our massive expenditures. Is this the best idea for our country? Possibly not. But, to paraphrase Bagehot’s words in *Lombard Street*, we must learn to deal with the system that we have, for reforming the entire system would be extremely difficult. Anyone can find a problem with a system. *Fixing* that problem is much harder. --- ### Works Cited Bagehot, Walter. *Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market*. Greenbook Publications, 2010\. Print. Bernholz, Peter. *Monetary Regimes and Inflation*. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc., 2003\. Print. Higgins, Bryon. "Was the ERM Crisis Inevitable?" October 1993\. *Kansas City Federal Reserve.* PDF. 8 May 2015. White, Lawrence H. *The Clash of Economic Ideas*. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012\. Print. ### Do Nuclear Reactors Lower Housing Prices? URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/do-nuclear-reactors-lower-housing-prices/ Last updated: 2015-05-12T23:07:44.000Z ## The Perceived Risk of Nuclear Power Does risk play a factor in the housing market? Obviously it does—if it didn’t, Detroit wouldn’t be in trouble right now, prices in high-crime areas would be the same as everywhere else, and we’d have subdivisions built on top of active volcanoes (at least in places other than Hawaii). But does *perceived* risk have an impact on housing prices? Obviously not in every case—if it happened all the time, California’s earthquake risks would result in a very empty state, or very low housing prices—but what about with something that is generally perceived by the public as unsafe, despite a pretty good safety record? For example, what about with nuclear reactors? I chose this topic because I’ve had an interest in nuclear development and nuclear power for many years, and I already had a decent grounding in the history and background. In addition, nuclear power is often portrayed by the media and Hollywood as unsafe, despite a stellar safety record in the United States, making it an ideal candidate to see if perceived risk could influence housing prices. This was something that I’d been wondering about since starting my economics degree, so I was thrilled by the fantastic opportunity to actually research this by mapping data and analyzing the results. I began with some basic research on whether housing prices could be affected by risk. One paper I found, *Does a Property-Specific Environmental Health Risk Create a “Neighborhood” Housing Price Stigma? Arsenic in Private Well Water*, written by Kevin Boyle, Nicolai Kuminoff, Congwen Zhang, Michael Devanney, and Kathleen Bell, studied the impact of arsenic in the well water of two towns in Maine. They found that housing prices had been significantly depressed after the discovery of arsenic, though the effect lasted a mere two years. They contrasted that with numerous other studies that focused on Superfund cleanup, where the effects of contamination on housing prices could lower housing prices in the surrounding areas for decades following the successful cleanup of a site (Boyle et al.). Two other excellent papers that discussed the reduction of property values were *Estimates of the Impact of Crime Rates on Property Values from Megan’s Laws* (Linden and Rockoff), which discussed the effect registered sex offenders have on local property values, and *Estimation of Perceived Risk and its Effects on Property Values* (McCluskey and Rauser), which concludes that both media coverage and past perception of risk influence current risk perception—and that increased perception of risk lowers property prices. When I walked away from my research, I was far more confident in my ability to draw some conclusions based on what the data said—people were just as influenced by *perceived* risk as they were by *actual* risk. But where would I 1) be able to find a reactor in a fairly risk-free area (or at least one perceived as being risk-free), and 2) be able to find the data I would need? After doing some searching, I decided to use the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, for several reasons. Firstly, because it is in a fairly stable area—the Phoenix, AZ. area isn’t prone to violent weather, flooding, earthquakes, or any other sort of natural phenomenon that might influence perceived risk (they do have some water issues, but I assumed for the sake of this project that people don't take longer-term risks into account when deciding where to live). Phoenix is regarded by many as a generally pleasant place to live, though perhaps a touch on the warm side. Secondly, because the Palo Verde NGS((Unless otherwise noted, Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, Palo Verde NGS, and PVNGS all refer to the same thing, which is the plant. “Palo Verde”, used by itself, refers to the nearby town.)) is the largest nuclear generating station in the United States—if people are concerned about living next to a nuclear generating station, they’d likely be most concerned about living next door to the largest NGS in the United States. And thirdly, I chose PVNGS for a much more personal reason: I’m originally from Phoenix, and I seize any opportunity to look at *anything* in the Phoenix area… especially during a chilly St Louis spring. ![Satellite view of Palo Verde NGS](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/2026/07/Map-Two-Overview-of-PVNGS.jpg) Satellite view of Palo Verde NGS, with ten mile evacuation zone drawn around it. I also decided to focus my research within a ten mile buffer zone of PVNGS; nuclear plants such as the one at Palo Verde are required to have a ten-mile evacuation zone around them. Within this zone, warning sirens are tested regularly, radiation monitoring is conducted, and instructions for evacuation are distributed regularly. I assumed that this ten-mile zone would be where the dangers of the generating station would be most emphasized, and therefore where the largest effects on housing prices would be. After I figured out *what* I was doing and *where* I’d be doing my analysis, I started looking for sources of data. I’d decided to look at both housing prices, and at household income. I found that Esri’s ArcGIS Online community had both in prepackaged datasets; unfortunately, they didn’t appear to allow me to view their underlying data, which made them useless for calculating population and estimating both housing prices and household income in a particular area. Since the easiest way to get my data (using Esri to do it for me) was out, I turned to the Census Bureau. I was focusing on housing prices and on household income, so I picked the American Community Survey as the best source of data that encompassed both, and I chose to use 2011 data because the 2012 data didn’t want to import into ArcMap properly on my computer. ![Position of Coolidge, AZ. relative to Palo Verde NGS](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/2026/07/Map-One-Overview.jpg) Coolidge, AZ is to the south of Phoenix; Palo Verde NGS is to the west. In order to properly compare housing prices and income, I would need to have a community that was roughly comparable to the area around PVNGS, while being far enough away that it wouldn’t be influenced in any way by the nuclear plant. After looking at most of the small communities in Arizona that were between 40 and 60 miles from downtown Phoenix (Palo Verde NGS is approximately 50 miles from downtown Phoenix), I selected Coolidge, AZ., as my control community. It had roughly the same demographics, approximately the same population, and was located well away from PVNGS. Next up was figuring out how many people lived near Palo Verde NGS, so I could double-check against the population numbers I had for Coolidge. This was originally a challenge, mostly because I wanted a fairly accurate number from what are essentially giant tracts of Census data (for the area I was in, the Census data was limited to tracts \[or at least that was all I could find\]). I checked to see if anyone else had had this issue before me, and I was rather surprised to learn that MSNBC investigative reporter Bill Dedman had written a very interesting analysis called *Nuclear Neighbors: Population Rises Near U.S. Reactors*, which included an analysis of population growth near nuclear power plants between 2000 and 2010\. While the results weren’t directly applicable to my project, since the data was from a different year than what I was working with and involved different variables, a paragraph at the bottom of the article was: it noted that, because the population data was contained in census tracts, the data had been averaged based on how much of the tract was included in the buffer. A little more searching led me to instructions from Esri on how to do the same thing for the dataset I was using, and for the household income and housing prices values. ![Census data](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/2026/07/Map-Three-Census-Data.jpg) Census data around Palo Verde Of course, this also presented a challenge in how to interpret this averaged data. Ultimately, issues with the data I had averaged led me to drop household income from my dataset—the numbers I was getting for average household income were simply too low. It’s completely *possible* that the average household in some areas only makes $3 per year, but Occam’s Razor would suggest that I was experiencing errors with my data instead. I had hoped that I would be able to go back, figure out my error, and obtain the correct data, but I simply didn’t have enough time to do so. This is more than a little unfortunate, because I believe that household income data is tied closely to housing prices. Leaving income out of the analysis only paints part of the picture. This actually brings up a very important point about the rest of my analysis; while the numbers I received for housing prices are quite reasonable, and the numbers I had from Coolidge were quite close to the numbers I found on the Census website, they are estimates based on how much property is near the plant, and assumes that every tract has a single average value. A manual review of the data shows property values that are quite sane, taking into account the terrain and population of the area, but it must be remembered that they are estimates based off of estimated data (since the ACS only surveys a fraction of the residences in an area, and uses their surveys to estimate values for the entire area). Unfortunately, without GIS data from the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office (which proved too cost-prohibitive to acquire), there’s was no method I could find that would have resulted in a better estimate. ![A map showing median housing values in Coolidge, AZ.](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/map-five-housing-values-in-coolidge.jpg) ![A circular map showing estimated housing values within 10 miles of Palo Verde NGS](https://ryanbrooks.net/content/images/www-ryanbrooks-net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/map-four-housing-values-near-pvngs.jpg) Keeping all of the above caveats in mind, along with the fact that my sample size for this survey was one nuclear power plant and one control city, I can tentatively conclude that housing prices near nuclear reactors *are* lower than housing prices in comparable communities. This doesn’t really surprise me—my research into the history and development of nuclear power shows that the “not in my backyard” mentality (known by the fairly catchy acronym NIMBY) is *extremely* pronounced when it comes to the construction and operation of nuclear reactors—though I am surprised that it was as pronounced as it is. According to my data, median housing prices around Palo Verde NGS are around $13,000 lower than the median housing prices in Coolidge-- $48,232 versus $61,285\. I was expecting a gap of \~$5,000, not a gap of almost three times my estimate. And given the expansion of Phoenix in the past ten to fifteen years, I conclude that prices were originally even lower and have been artificially inflated due to housing pressures; the nearby city of Buckeye, located about fifteen miles to the west, grew from a population of 6,537 in 2000 to 50,876 in 2010—a 678.3% increase in ten years. The associated housing shortage could have easily raised housing prices in the area by a significant amount, though I don’t have the required data to estimate by how much. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to perform the analysis I really wanted to perform. When I set out on this project, I had intended to show that the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station had depressed prices in the immediate area surrounding it, which, due to limitations of my data, I was unable to prove. I had intended to use Census data from the 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010 Decennial Censuses, but unfortunately they either didn’t record the data I needed, or they were unavailable. I tried using the historical data from NHGIS, but I was unable to make it work the way I needed it to. So, in the absence of the data that I couldn’t obtain, how could I have expanded this to increase the accuracy of my conclusions? It probably wouldn’t have been incredibly difficult to expand this to other nuclear generating stations in the United States (and, given enough of a break from school and work, I would love to do this). If I could show that the same effect was present near other nuclear plants, it would vastly increase the plausibility of my evidence. And controlling of local risk factors would probably be fairly straightforward as long as I was careful in my choice of control community. In addition, getting the proper household income data would paint a much clearer picture of what is going on—knowing that housing prices are lower than in another community doesn’t mean too much if you can’t show that the income level in the first community is equal to or greater than that of the second community (or at least roughly comparable). In this particular case, I needed more granular data—data I couldn’t obtain without difficulty. And, in retrospect, trying to get the income data I *did* have to work consumed far too much time for the payoff that resulted. If I had known that the data wouldn’t work from the beginning, it would have been far better to have instead spent that time looking at other nuclear generating stations and their surrounding communities to expand my sample size beyond a single example. --- ## Works Cited "2010 Census Data - 2010 Census." United States Census Bureau. Web. 5 May 2015. "2011 American Community Survey Data." United States Census Bureau. Web. 4 May 2015. Boyle, Kevin J. et al. “Does a Property-Specific Environmental Health Risk Create a ‘neighborhood’ Housing Price Stigma? Arsenic in Private Well Water.” *Water Resources Research* 46.3 (2010): n/a–n/a. Web. 9 May 2015. Dedman, Bill. "Nuclear Neighbors: Population Rises near US Reactors." Msnbc.com. 14 Apr. 2011\. Web. 9 May 2015. Linden, Leigh, and Jonah E. Rockoff. “Estimates of the Impact of Crime Risk on Property Values from Megan’s Laws.” *American Economic Review*. N.p., 2008\. Web. 9 May 2015. McCluskey, Jill J., and Gordon C. Rauser. “Estimates of Perceived Risk and Its Effects on Property Values.” *Land Economics* 77.1 (2001): 42–55\. Web. 9 May 2015. ### Of MOOCs and Learning URL: https://ryanbrooks.net/of-moocs-and-learning/ Last updated: 2013-06-06T02:06:35.000Z Decades ago, dreamers imagined a world where the resources and tools for learning anything could be used by anyone. Where colleges, universities, and even ordinary people could share information and ideas, collaborate and learn. With the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989, many people thought that that world was close at hand, but it's taken twenty-four years and countless hours of work to bring it to fruition. Earlier this spring, I heard about a new site called [edX](https://www.edx.org/?ref=ryanbrooks.net). One of the new generation of education startups-- called [MOOCs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive%5Fopen%5Fonline%5Fcourse?ref=ryanbrooks.net)\-- it offers online courses from a [number of high-profile schools](https://www.edx.org/schools?ref=ryanbrooks.net), including MIT, Harvard, University of California- Berkeley, Rice University, and the University of Texas. One course in particular that caught my eye was called [*edX 7.00x: Introduction to Biology- The Secret of Life*](https://www.edx.org/course/mit/7-00x/introduction-biology-secret-life/624?ref=ryanbrooks.net), and was taught by [Professor Eric Lander](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric%5FLander?ref=ryanbrooks.net), one of the authors on the [Human Genome Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%5FGenome%5FProject?ref=ryanbrooks.net). I signed up, and prepared to watch some recorded lectures from his classroom. I soon discovered that the quality of the lectures was far above my expectations. Where I had been expecting poorly-lit, low-quality video, there was professionally-recorded video with accompanying resources, images, text excerpts, problem sets, discussion boards-- basically an entire college course. edX published new lectures weekly, with weekly or bi-weekly graded tests. Scoring higher than a 60% on the entire class would gain you a certificate of accomplishment; those scoring below 60% by the end of the course could choose to instead audit the course. For the past few months, I have wandered through biology with a fantastic guide. Professor Lander is clearly a man who loves his work, and his boundless enthusiasm has made even the dullest parts of biology seem bright and interesting. The discussion boards have been teeming with helpful classmates, brimming with insights. The problem sets and tests have challenged without being impossibly difficult. And now, it's over. Today was the final day. I watched the farewell message from Professor Lander, completed the survey for the course, and completed the final exam. I'll miss the weekly lectures, I'll miss learning something new about biology every week, and I'll miss interacting with my classmates. So, to Professor Lander and the entire team at MIT and edX, if you happen to read this, thank you. Thank you for bringing the joy of learning not only to me, but to the 40,000 other people who signed up as well. Today, anyone with an Internet connection and a desire to learn can go online and join a high-quality class in almost anything that they're interested in, and the edX team, along with their partners, are in large part responsible for this distribution of knowledge. Several decades ago, science fiction spoke of a future where knowledge could be shared and traded among everyone. Writers dreamed of a world where anyone could learn anything-- a future society where information could be truly free. The future is here.